This text is about a personal reckoning with settler colonialism

I am often unsure of for whom I am actually writing when I submit a text to be stored and retrieved here. More often than not, it is for a machine audience. I am writing now as an attempt to reach a human audience. More specifically, humans who find themselves taking up more space in the oppressor / occupier territory of the Venn diagram of the Middle East. I do this now because besides feeling frustrated, enraged, and helpless, I am responding to a friend who asked me to do this. I love my friend and I want to do what I can.

I have been wondering, what do I have to contribute to the collective undoing of the project of settler colonialism? As a self who was born into being an occupier and one who was brought up within a Zionist framework, I am in a specific position. Joining the online conversation right now, I don’t want to engage in what appears to be predictably hopeless repetitive arguments that disrespect and devalue human life. However, I do want to help build a growing coalition that will stop this thing.

In the particular position I am in, I know that there is much to unlearn before the project is dismantled. I know that the process is painful. More importantly, I know that a lot of the unlearning is deeply personal and the work never ends. It turns out that never ending work is tiring, so proper posture can help ease the movement. When I imagine a place from which to enact this movement with minimal damage, Fred Moten’s words bounce from the bottom of a healing heart, providing ergonomic support:

“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?”

I am writing now to say that the ongoing Nakba of the Palestinian people, the occupation, apartheid state, settler colonialism, and Zionism have caused major harm in my personal life. I want to talk about that harm, and invite others to do the same.

To be clear. I am not comparing my pain to the pain of the oppressed. It goes without saying that the ongoing catastrophe that continues to be devastatingly current in Palestine has to end immediately. The pain it causes is beyond words. Those who are affected the most should set the terms for what happens next.

My intention here is to say that the shit that is settler colonialism, occupation, Zionism, has been killing me, too, however softly. It will be good to recognize the many different ways it is hurting a huge potential coalition of people, and that doing so will help sustain actions to undo it. I hope that whoever is reading this from a similar position as mine considers what is at stake for them. How are their life, their relationships, their spirituality, and well being impacted. I hope more people can articulate this for themselves and for others.

I can try to give an example. It’s not easy. It comes in many forms. It is people casually mentioning a desire for mass murder of another people while we are all sitting Shiva together for my Holocaust survivor grandmother. It is not being able to truly fully be myself and connect with family and friends because we hold a fundamentally different worldview regarding Zionism and how it is in conflict with Palestinians having basic human rights and dignity. These are friends and family that I am close to in many ways, but there is always a lingering distance. It is having to travel across the world in order to speak to a friend who grew up an hour away from me, and then have that conversation be looked upon with suspicion by others. It is feeling inadequate for saying anything about and feeling like a failure when staying silent to. It is carrying mysterious aggressions in my body picked up by living in a pressure cooker of a place for two decades. It is being unable to engage in any form, however mild, of political resistance, without fear of intense repercussions or of having relationships destroyed as a result. It is having gotten no education regarding political engagement outside Jewish history whatsoever. It is an alarming sense of entitlement showing up in unexpected ways, affecting me and those around me. It is keeping my community fragmented since some people cannot be in the same space as others. It is PTSD corroding family for generations. It is militaristic culture shaping the language I speak against what I wish to say. It is the draft altering the behavior of people I love and our relationships. It is the pain caused by the impossibility of loving where I am from. It is witnessing an ongoing spiritual damage in a huge population with which I share a passport. It is the weight of feeling responsible for their actions. It is feeling like any mention of Palestine gets misinterpreted and ends up hurting people I grew up with and love, probably including this very text.

It’s going to take a lot of people to stop this thing. There is no moment like now to articulate how this is all fucked up for you too.

I see many calls for a ceasefire around me. I join the plea to cease the fire. At the same time, it is necessary to consider how to build from the destruction. Meaningful change and repair cannot take place without a deep reckoning of the systematic violence that is settler colonialism, where one people has more power and rights than another. Failing to do so will result in the catastrophe continuing, as it has for over seventy years now.

As an end note, I should say that I am uncomfortable in this digital space. However, I do welcome respectful conversation off of it. Reach out to me personally offline if you want to talk.

** Attached image is of an Israeli history textbook, entitled “Building a State in the Middle East”. The book is cut to reveal an image of the Nakba.